It's different at altitude. You have to imagine, 30 km/h at altitude, because the air density is lower, is maybe like 10 or 15 km/h for us. So the higher wind speed doesn't bother you, the glider performs better. If you don't have any wind, I don't think it's possible to launch at Kilimanjaro, let alone, you know, with a bit of a tailwind you won't get off the ground.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding. Today
with Thomas Lemle and Lucian Haas on the mic.
A high-altitude mountaineer is someone who climbs high mountains, specifically so high that they have to acclimatize their body to the corresponding altitude and, above all, the very thin air there beforehand. 56-year-old Thomas Lemle from Waldburg in the Allgäu is a specialist in this field. He has researched the body's hypoxic reactions and, based on his findings, developed a special breathing technique; with it, he managed to climb several 8,000-meter peaks, including Mount Everest, without supplemental oxygen. Thomas Lemle also flies a paraglider. He planned to take his paraglider on future expeditions to glide off from 8,000-meter peaks and thus escape the so-called death zone more quickly.
But that didn't happen. During a training flight at his local Hochgrat in the spring of 2020, he crashed into the slope shortly after takeoff. He narrowly escaped death. The doctors predicted that he would likely never be able to walk again. But Thomas refused to accept that.
In this 60th episode of Podz-Glidz, Thomas Lemle tells his story. It covers, among other things, high-altitude mountaineering, the difficulties of taking off and flying in thin air, the effects of proper breathing techniques, his paraglider crash at Hochgrat, a near-death experience, and the miracle of relearning to walk with enormous willpower despite paralysis. Because Thomas has a goal. He wants to go back to Kilimanjaro.
This abundance of interesting topics naturally exceeds the usual one-hour timeframe of a Podz-Glidz episode. That's why I've decided to release this podcast in two parts. It's worth staying tuned until the end of each one. Before we get started with part 1, just a quick tip and a request. Please become a supporter of Podz-Glidz and the associated blog Lu-Glidz. Because that helps me continue to bring you more interesting stories from the world of paragliding in the future.
Thomas, what do you associate with the date May 23rd?
I associate May 23rd with two things. First, on May 23, 2016, I managed to be one of the few people to stand on Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, solo—I don't want to write "solo" because there were other people out there too—but I made it. On May 23, 2016, at 2:00 PM, I stood on Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. I climbed from base camp in four days in what's called alpine style, carried all my own gear, and was up there at 2:00 PM, stayed for an hour. I was incredibly lucky; just before I reached the highest point, a cloud settled over the summit.
It was calm, and I had the opportunity to record it because my biggest problem when I was standing on Mount Everest—no one will believe you—was that my camera failed. I had an iPhone in my jacket pocket back then, and I knew I had to somehow take a selfie or record it somehow. Because of that cloud and the lack of wind, I was able to take off my gloves, enter the PIN code on the phone, and film myself up there on Everest. How cold was it there, though, since you're talking about taking off gloves and stuff? Well, the problem is, I can't say. I know it was minus 40 degrees in the morning when I left Camp 3. At the Everest summit at 2 p.m.—I have the weather from the Innsbruck weather service, a friend of mine, Karl Gabel, who always gives me the weather report for these expeditions, he told me—on my day, it was minus 25 degrees.
You might think that's not very cold. But you have to know that at high altitudes, the peripheral blood vessels—in the hands and feet—constrict completely. This means they hardly get any blood flow anymore. So, minus 25 degrees is already very cold. But it's all manageable as long as there's no wind. And the wind—because many people ask what the actual problem is with high-altitude mountaineering—the weather itself isn't the problem. The cloudier it is, the better, because there's less wind. The problem for us is the wind. And it's simply the case that if you want to climb Everest without oxygen, you need a day where the wind speeds—this is my opinion—are under 20 kilometers per hour. I'll get to that later. It's quite interesting to me what that has to do with paragliding.
So if the wind speeds are under 20 kilometers per hour, then the wind chill effect—meaning the wind is constantly blowing away that warm layer surrounding our bodies—is such that it's still manageable. Anything above that, the wind chill is so strong that you simply get frostbite. There are very few people who have climbed Everest without oxygen and didn't get frostbite. And I am one of them, but I just had incredible luck—maybe that happens, I don't know, once in the spring. To stand at the top of Everest for five years and have no wind. I had that luck on that day, and then it was possible for me to be at the summit for an hour, and then I got a Chinese net there, and then I made a proposal to my wife,
since I had already stood on Everest, and that simply helped. The highlight
of your life in both senses, so
roughly. But I don't have any more, I was always asked, did you get your Quadro until the answer came? No, I didn't. So I descended, and the answer came again six weeks later.
About Everest? We can talk about Everest and high-altitude mountaineering and stuff like that later. But you just said there are two important dates you associate with May 23rd. What's the second one? That
The second is, on the 23rd—which is also like April 23rd, 2000, so a year before 2020—I had a severe paraglider accident. I flew into a lee-side rotor, actually out of stupidity, and then had a fatal collapse. I don't even know that myself, though; I was told that afterwards. And then, more or less due to this centrifugal force, I flew straight into rocky terrain and massively destroyed my pelvis in the process. Initially, the diagnosis was that I was paraplegic. After six weeks—six months—in the hospital and rehab, I was then discharged as a wheelchair user.
And yes, they just told me I'd get sick. My sciatic nerve was gone on the left side. And they told me, well, I wouldn't be able to walk anymore. That was, of course, how should I put it, given the lifestyle I'd led, it was a colossal turning point in my life. I didn't know if I'd be able to manage living as a wheelchair user at all. So I found that incredibly, yes, I found it incredibly difficult. I was grateful that I was still alive. But it was clear to me, I have to, I have to walk again in some form. My whole life revolved around it, or rather, I was out walking every day. I was always in the mountains, I had to walk again. Otherwise, for me, it's simply more vital than anything else.
And I managed to get out of the wheelchair through a lot, a lot of training and a lot, a lot of hard work. And through crutches at first. And by now, I'm at the point where I can also walk with poles. And then on May 23rd of this year, for the first time, I climbed up the Hochgrat again on crutches. And the Hochgrat was the mountain where I fell. So that has a double meaning. So May 23rd, 2020, back on the Hochgrat for the first time. And that was the five-year anniversary of my Everest climb. And I have to be honest, I celebrated this Hochgrat climb almost more than the Everest climb.
So, I didn't—well, many people didn't consider it possible anymore. That I could go into the mountains again. And May 23, 2020, is almost... I think it's more important in my life now than that Everest.
So, Everest without oxygen and Hochgrat, basically with the doctors predicting that you actually can't do it anymore. That you won't make it up there at all. But despite that, you did it and made it to the top.
Exactly. That's, well, for the future, how should I put it... yeah, it gives me incredible power, right? That I actually managed to do it again, that I can go again, go into the mountains again. And it's, how should I say, it's actually more important to me now than the, than this Everest climb without oxygen. Sounds weird. People really laughed when I went up the Hochgrat and took so many pictures and selfies. A lot of people know me from the region, too. And they said, now he's lost it. Now he's really doing it. I've been on the Hochgrat over a thousand times. That's my training ground. And now he's, now he's taking selfies at the top of the Hochgrat summit, right? They said, now, now we're losing it.
Yeah, but with a story like that, you're allowed to be a bit crazy. Yeah, yeah, a lot of people don't even know that story.
But it was, yeah, well, for me, reaching this summit cross was more moving than those prayer flags at the summit of Everest.
Does it only have one meaning for you now? Like as a training mountain, where you say, okay, I've climbed my training mountain again? Or was it also something like, in a way, it was your mountain of destiny, where you say, okay, that's where it knocked you down. And you're conquering this mountain again.
Yes, certainly. So, this Hochgrat plays a role in my life—it sounds weird, but it has a very central meaning. I always trained at the Hochgrat. I mean, for all my... I've stood on ten eight-thousand-meter peaks by now. For the entire eight-thousand-meter expedition, I always trained at the Hochgrat. During the Monday evenings, mostly after work, we would always go up at night, one year out. And it holds a special place. I also did my first alpine paragliding at the Hochgrat 30 years ago. My first high-altitude flights, so to speak. I also saw people crash at the Hochgrat, some of whom were partially paralyzed. It's very treacherous with this south launch site at the Hochgrat. It's just treacherous because it pushes around at the Hochgrat around noon.
The Alps pull, you see, when we have the sun shining, you have to imagine that the Alps are pulling air from somewhere. So, masses of warm air rise, the thermals start. And these masses of warm air have to be pulled in somehow. And here in the Alpine foothills, they are pulled in from the, well, they are pulled in from the foothills, from the north. Here, we call that the Bavarian wind. That means this north wind comes up from Bavaria, which then pulls these, these air masses into the central Alps. It replaces them. And that's why we often get a northerly flow around noon—it can sometimes even start just before twelve—we get a northerly flow. And depending on the thermals in the spring, it can become very strong at times. And when this northerly flow exceeds 20, 25 km/h, you have to imagine, then you get to the south side. You still have the thermals rising, but then you get into a lee wave.
So a rotor creates a rotor, but you don't necessarily perceive it. Because you have this... this rotor, which basically, when it comes over the ridge... you're a bit below the ridge, then you have the rotor, the lift from the rotor, and you have the thermals. And to you, it initially seems like you have, how should I put it, a headwind, a wind from the south. But it's then a combination of thermals and rotor. And yeah, that was my undoing. The joke is, I know it. I've done it hundreds of times and I still ignored it.
I wanted to ask, based on how you told it, you've really lived through this phenomenon, so to speak. Mentally, you know exactly what's going on. How does it happen to such an experienced man and an experienced pilot, let's say? How does it still happen to you to make this mistake and end up in a rotor?
I've been, well, it's been 14 months now, it was 14 months ago. I was in the hospital once in total, and during four rehab sessions, I also had time to think about it. It's, it's specifically like, it's such a mistake. I'm also out in the mountains a lot in the winter. And it's the same mistake as in avalanche accidents. Why do avalanche accidents happen when you know the slope is dangerous? And it was similar for me, a similar phenomenon. Specifically, it's this group pressure phenomenon. Or rather, in a group, you often switch something off. So, if I try to practice it now, if I transfer it to avalanches, it's like this: we're standing at the top of the slope. It's actually clear that the slope has wind formations in it, the slope is wind-loaded.
It could be avalanche-prone. So, and now a group comes up next to me and they head into the slope. They go down and I'm standing up there with my group. It takes a lot, a lot of self-confidence to say, I'm not going in there now. And with me, it was actually similar. So, you have to know, it was April last year. It was the first time in Bavaria, there was a complete lockdown, there was a flight ban. And I flew out for the last time in March. So I was at Kilimanjaro in February. I trained there at Kilimanjaro. I always—Kilimanjaro is my training mountain. I'll get back to this Kilimanjaro thing later. Anyway, there's a special connection. But I was at Kilimanjaro in February, I trained there with the paraglider.
I was at the summit five times. And I flew down from the summit of Kilimanjaro five times in one week. And the last time, I flew from the summit of Kilimanjaro, a 35-kilometer glide out into the savannah towards Moshi. That was an insane flight. I had to fly through it with GPS, through clouds. It was an incredible flight for me. And now, the little backstory to that. Then in March, I was training. I wanted to fly down from an 8,000er with a paraglider in April. Then in March, I was back home. I was home in mid-March. I did a bit more training at the Hochgrad. Just a lot of hiking in the mountains, flying down, hiking, flying down. So, more of this hike and fly. Training a bit with extra gear. Just training for the X-Alps.
So, that's basically the training I did. Then there was the lockdown. You couldn't fly. For me, it was clear that I wanted to go to Nepal in April. And to fly off those 8,000-meter peaks. And then... the lockdown, it went until, it went this week on April 23rd. That was a Thursday. So it went until, I think until Sunday or Monday. And then it was cleared again, that you were allowed to fly again. Then the site manager at Hochgrad had to agree. They then agreed that you could fly again. And then it was released again. I waited until Thursday, then I left very early with the mountain bike. That's 70 kilometers for me. I biked in there very early. Because you weren't supposed to go by car.
Or not drive as far or something. There was a regulation like that too. I don't remember exactly how it was. I rode in on my mountain bike. Then I went up to the Hochgrad. And I already knew during the ascent. Because by riding in with the bike, I wasn't quite as early anymore. So it was already like that. When I got to the top, it was 11 o'clock. And I noticed during the ascent. We have a wind gauge on the Hochgrad when we go up there. And it was actually pointing nicely towards the south. So there was no influence yet. The Bavarian wind hadn't kicked in yet. Because for us, it's actually quite easy at the Hochgrad. We can just angle the ridge a bit and then have a north-west launch site too. So it's actually quite... But you have the north-west launch site in the morning. You start
In the morning, it's always south. And after a while, you switch. You then switch to the west.
Yeah, exactly. In the morning, you have the option to hold a bit of south-east. So you just have the opportunity to catch the thermal path. And then you come up. So if you want to go on a cross-country flight, you actually have to go to this south launch site in the morning. Good. And then you have to be careful. And I have... I'm actually very meticulous. I've put up wind flags everywhere at Hochgrad. I've installed wind socks at the landing field. So, because I do this very often, I've just set up a bit of an infrastructure there. And I'm aware of this issue too. And it was clear to me as I climbed over the ridge: okay, watch out. Now it fits. If you pack up right away, you can fly down. And I didn't want to do a big cross-country flight or anything. I actually just wanted to turn a bit. And I don't know, maybe some back and forth soaring. Or flying back and forth. Maybe to Hedrichvor or something.
And back. And then land on the north side. Our actual landing field is on the north side. And then it happened like this. I went up, actually with the idea in mind that I'd start right away. Because there was the danger that the wind would turn. And then there were two paragliders sitting up there at the start. Both had already unpacked their gliders. And then it was nice. My wind flags were still up there anyway. I'd put up several wind flags up there. Stuck into the hazelnut bushes. And it was all nice from the south. Everything fit. But then they didn't want to start right away. They wanted to wait a bit until the thermals picked up a little more. And then we started talking. And then we somehow realized that there was a story in the Advance magazine about me.
When I flew over Elbrus. Twice. So they somehow knew me. And then we started talking. Yeah, me with this high-mountain climbing and paragliding. And so on. And then I said, yeah, I'm currently in training. I was just at Kilimanjaro. And then they perked up. And then I told them about Kilimanjaro. With paragliding. And they were interested in something like that. And they said, yeah, I'm doing another tour in the fall. You can come along. And we just got caught up chatting. We chatted and chatted and chatted. And I didn't look at my watch anymore.
And exactly. At some point, the first one took off. But it was already 12 p.m. by then.
Okay. But those two started before you. And they came out clean. Exactly.
It was, how should I put it... well, the day was. I only know from friends who flew across from the thing. At the Seilmaß. They said it was a brutally rough, hammer-turning one too. And the north then kicked in quite a bit. And it was probably... so the first one is out. It turned immediately. And then the second one. And then I didn't... I just didn't think anymore. That's exactly it. He's flying. There's one. Then another one is flying. And I have to say, I'm—you'd say—95 percent of the flights I've done, I've always done alone. So I've done almost exclusively hike and fly. And I was always alone. I always had to make the decisions myself. But when you do it, you're focused differently. When you do it alone, then you're...
First of all, you're much more cautious. And you're completely focused. And you try. I always did. I didn't do a single flight without sitting down the night before to look at the wind conditions—you know, the wind maps. What's happening? What could happen? It's cool. So, I was always very aware of the weather issues because of the high-mountain routes. I did it on that day too. And it was clear to me that the Bavarian wind would kick in that day. But then one starts before you. You've already unpacked your glider. Then the second one starts. That goes well. And now it's your turn. And that was the mistake. And that probably... So we think it was like this, the Bavarian wind had reached this wind speed...
the one that comes over the ridge and forms this rotor, the two before me hadn't reached it yet. And probably at the moment I was there, the wind speed was so high that it caused me to, that I had this collapse. I have to say, I don't even know. I got a sort of, how should I put it, a retrograde amnesia. So, I mean, I crashed, I made the emergency call myself, I spoke with the pilots, with the mountain rescue paramedics, I also spoke with them in the emergency room. But I don't know. Okay. And interestingly, that came out because the police were looking for the person who made the emergency call as a witness for ages. And they couldn't find him.
And then six weeks after the accident, my wife listened to our answering machine. And I was on there, saying I just crashed on the Hochgrad. Because of that, we know now that it was me. And I was on the Hochgrad, I dialed in via the Austrian network. That's probably why no phone number was displayed. I don't know. So somehow it must have gone like that. But I got some kind of retrograde amnesia and don't know anything anymore. I just know I pulled the glider back, spun around. And then, if you start out towards the west, southwest, west, you can see the Centis. And that was the last image. I have the Centis before my eyes and then nothing more. And then, only a day later, I regained consciousness—for me, consciousness now—I was lying in the shock room and saw the little lights from these syringes and pumps and so on, where they were... exactly.
It's like a total mental breakdown that happened there.
Yeah, but massively. And the interesting thing is, I was there. I mean, I experienced it all. I did it all. I made the emergency call. I
said,
I told them, I don't know, what I did, because they also knew that I didn't just fall off a high grade for the first time. So it was about time for an experienced Gleitschirm-Blog. And the interesting thing was, I spoke with psychologists later, because they have—I have to say, within the scope of this flight, I crashed so hard that I lost four liters of blood into my pelvis and basically died. So I had a near-death experience. And yeah, I was actually dead. Then I came to, and a day later they had stabilized me enough that they could operate on me on Friday. The surgery was also something quite special.
The surgeon was supposed to have his farewell at the hospital that day. He was going into retirement, and I actually owe Professor Dr. Mauger my life—the reason I'm not paralyzed. On the day of his farewell, he put me back together in an eight-hour surgery. Basically patched me up. Yeah, you really have to say patched up. You have to imagine my spine—I landed completely on my butt, or a bit more toward the left side—and it smashed my spine into my pelvis. It crushed the sacrum, bent the coccyx upward, and blew out the pelvis.
I was basically... I was 15 cm shorter, they had to stretch me out, screw the pelvis in the front, screw the pelvis in the back, and then the whole thing was screwed up towards the spine. So, of course, the first prognosis was, yeah, clearly paraplegia. And thank God, I always say, thanks to the great operation, it turned out that it was just like that. And it's a so-called low paraplegia. And I was just very lucky there. I always say, someone just didn't want me to go because otherwise you wouldn't survive that. So, yeah.
What is that like for someone like you, who spends so much time running, in the mountains, and all that? And then you have an accident, wake up somewhere in the hospital, or talk to the doctors there, and they say, Thomas, or Mr. Lemle, or whatever, they say, and you or they will probably never be able to walk again. What do you think in that moment?
They don't say it like that. Okay. They say, well, the first thing is, of course, I might have to go back a bit. Not many people had this, but I really had this near-death experience. So I had this tunnel with this light—now, that might all sound like I'm imagining it or something. But I had it. I experienced it. So I, it really was like that. And the interesting thing was, I had a choice. So I knew exactly that if I let go now, that everything would be fine. You feel so... you can't even imagine it. So I'm no longer afraid of death because it's a very blessed and very calm state. You feel completely, completely safe and would, let's say, gladly follow that call.
On the other hand, I basically did a training program. I was treated like a competitive athlete. Accordingly, I was very, well, very focused on myself. I have a family and I've built up quite a bit of tension in the context of my training. And for me, it was clear: hey, I have to, I have to go back. I have to clear a few things up with my children and my wife. I said I can't go now. And I found that quite interesting. So I experienced that in this phase between the crash, then the shock room, and this fall, where I basically passed away. And then I woke up. And then I was, and then they beamed me away again immediately because I was being operated on.
So I was with myself for a moment and then they said, yeah, I have some kind of corset now, they've held me together with the pelvis or with a corset or something. And then they said I'm going to be operated on right away. And then I was out of the corset. Then I woke up from the surgery, lying in there, and first of all, you're just glad to be alive. You're just, you're just glad to be alive, that you... so with these, these conversations with these people. You often do things in life where there's, there's some kind of, you had a fight once and then you drag it out forever instead of discussing it. That's also a lesson I learned. So I'm not going to have any more disputes for any day.
I won't have any more disputes with myself. I try to resolve things on that day, because you never know when it's over. And it's quite interesting. In the end, you don't care if you stood on Mount Everest; what you care about is, my god, do I have a grudge with this or that person that I can no longer resolve? That was very decisive for me. And first, you're just glad to be alive. And then you're still in that thing, they have the pumps that fill you up with medication, you get morphine, you realize you're more or less under the influence of drugs anyway. And then you're lying there in that bed. And I had a quite nice room, I could look out. And yeah, then you're just glad to be alive and think, well, it's not that bad. Because of these drugs, it doesn't all seem that bad to you. You'd already notice, hello, I can't feel my legs anymore.
But because of these drugs, you don't take it that way, you take it relatively lightly. Let's put it like that. And you're just happy that you can still talk to people. Thankfully, I still had my phone with me, and I immediately called all sorts of people. I also cleared up my stuff, the things I'd always thought might cause a dispute.
Did you have like a list, or did you make one for yourself, where you thought, with all these people, I still have things to clear up, I'll call...
Yeah, I actually did that. For me, it was really like that, because it wasn't clear if I'd even survive. I also had the problem that I'd broken several things—I'd broken all my ribs, for instance, and couldn't breathe properly anymore. So it wasn't clear again. Then I quickly wrote a living will, or things like that. And I made a will, too. It wasn't clear. I was just scared that I might actually... And I had this rush, like I had to take care of the people there. If I do this, then let it be for that. But I just wanted to do it. And then I was able to breathe better again. And then, for three or four days, it was clear. Okay, I'm going to survive this. But as it looked, they only wanted to fly me to Murnau. That's our specialist clinic for...
When it's spinal cord injuries. That didn't work because the flight weather wasn't right or something. And then they examined me again here in Ravensburg. Or rather, put me in the MRI. They did another full-body scan and found that the spine is intact. So it happened way down at the bottom. Mostly in the sacral area. And there's a chance there that he isn't paralyzed. And then it went on for about a week or so. And then I got a sensation in my right foot.
Yeah, and well, then they said okay. And later I was transferred to the neurology department in Wangen. And there, they did specific measurements. And they said, yeah, so the right one isn't a hundred percent there. But it seems to be recovering. It's coming back, yeah. But the left one is dead. So for me, it just means I'll be in a wheelchair. I was still lying down. I mean, I was just lying down for almost three months. I couldn't move at all. I could only move my head from side to side. Because I had insane pain from these fractures I had. I was always in pain. Even at night. Sometimes the painkillers didn't work properly for me. And yeah, I just had brutal pain.
At times, I didn't want to live anymore. I have to be honest. I thought, there came this phase where I said, what's the point of this? This isn't living anymore. Lying around, taking pills every day just to get rid of the pain, and that's it. Because my problems are solved. Fine, for the family it would be terrible if I were dead, of course. But I had that feeling. I said, I've lived my dreams for 55 years now. I really lived. I was able to live my dreams. And now to lie in bed as a full-time care case with constant pain. That was, for me, well, how should I put it, it sounds weird now, but if you have the option, you'd say, I'm done. What's the point? It's just such a miserable appendage.
But regardless, that's how it was. I went from that rehab to the second one, the orthopedic rehab. I had a very good doctor there. That was in Isny, Neutrauchburg. Dr. Imre. And she told me—I thought that was very good—and it's actually still my mantra to this day—she said, "Listen here. We doctors can help you get healthy. But getting healthy, you have to do that yourself. You have to do it yourself. No doctor can do that for you. You have to do it yourself. You have to do it every day. And if you want to walk again, then you get up in the morning. And the first thing you do, you say, 'I want to walk again.' And you hang in there and put in the effort." And that's exactly how it was.
So, they had me—from that lying position, they slowly moved me into a wheelchair. And with the wheelchair, in Isny, it's a bit hilly. I just, I simply couldn't get up the hills properly. It doesn't have a rollback lock. I'd always look up with the wheelchair, then slam on the brake and rest again. Then try again, but it's like in a car, with the steep start, it's just difficult. Yeah, of course. And that really annoyed and frustrated me. And then I started. I hadn't practiced much before in an excavator either. Like, supporting myself so I could walk a little bit. But walking was something else. I had to relearn walking. Those were some really intense moments too.
I lost the receptors, so to speak, at the bottom of my soles. They don't work anymore. Now I had to learn to walk by watching my foot and my leg with my eyes and then imagining in my head how I used to walk. Or, in some cases, I watched YouTube videos of people walking so that my head or my brain could relearn how walking works. So you tried to,
to basically mimic that? Yes, that
it's like climbing or like sports or competitive climbing. You know, I basically do these holds that I do on a route, I do that mental training, I do that in my head. And that's how I went through the movement. I just imagined, aha, how do I go now? How do I start moving? And then they squeezed me into this stand where I could support myself with my forearm. And then they said, okay, now you move. Of course, nothing happened. I didn't know. You're just standing there
you're there and you can imagine,
but it doesn't move like that. Exactly. You can, you are, if you've been lying down for six months, your body switches off this system, the legs. He can't do that anymore. He doesn't know how anymore. It's gone. It's like it no longer exists in your head. And those pathways, you have to reshape them all over again. And then it's like, you can't go by the same pattern you used to. Because you have, you have to imagine, it's paralyzed for me. I have no feeling left in my left leg or left foot. And he has to relearn that. But it's amazing what our brain can do. You have to imagine that too.
Quick question, just for clarification. Because you say it's paralyzed, but you can still... No, no, no. Or is it stiff in certain...
Wise? No, no, you have to imagine, at the beginning it was like the leg wasn't even there. I couldn't feel it, the whole leg from the hip down. I didn't have any muscle left on that leg, or very little remaining, it just atrophies. When a muscle no longer has a nerve, it gets broken down. Because for a muscle to function, it needs a nerve connection. And if it no longer has a nerve connection, it breaks down and is eventually converted into connective tissue. That means it's no longer there. There's still bone, fat, and connective tissue. And it was like a crutch there with me—well, I wasn't very, very well-trained in my legs yet. I had of course already... So, just in the leg muscles alone, they estimate I lost, because I weighed 83 kilos before and 73 kilos afterwards.
So I lost 10 kilograms of muscle in my legs alone. Because from the waist up, it was actually still pretty much the same. And that's simply because the nerves were no longer there. You have to imagine it like a prosthesis. So your leg is like a prosthesis. Exactly, you don't feel it, you just have something hanging there. And that's how it was. And then you get into this stand. I couldn't stand on the leg, it had just withered away, right. But then I was lucky that from above, from the spine, the nerves somehow regenerated a bit, so suddenly the glutes—the butt muscle—and a bit of the quadriceps in the front, that suddenly became controllable. And then they said, well, if you can control it, then it can't lift.
So I can lift my foot. And that's how we started. And then I had to learn to imagine how I walk. I personally had to give myself the cue in my head. Like, okay, now you're walking. But then I had to look at the leg because it's different, and my brain had to learn, okay, the feedback that the leg is moving forward now, or where it's positioned in space, it's getting that through my eyes. And so I started walking. But I couldn't just stand up and go. That wasn't possible. I had to... that was a real ordeal at the beginning, this visualization of me walking, and then looking at the leg, and then suddenly, bam, the foot went forward.
But I didn't feel it.
Can you feel anything there now, or is the left one always...
...still numb? No, I mean, I wanted to participate before, as to why I can actually walk now. Back then it was the hand, then they [treated] me, and then it kept getting better. And then at some point, my brain learned, okay, aha, I don't need to look at the leg anymore, but there are also receptors in the knee joint. That's the reason why you can actually go skiing. And these knee joint receptors can actually give very good information on where the lower leg is positioned. And I learned that, and now I can—I was a pretty good skier back in the day, so that might have helped—and now I can walk completely normally, like you and I, but I go through the knee joint, through the receptors in the knee joint. So by now, it's like a lot has come back. I can train my thigh muscles now.
There are some small ones, they're not big, but I can train them and use them too. At this point, the complete paralysis is from the knee down. So, that means mainly the foot dorsiflexors, the plantar flexors—so the calves and the muscles at the front of the lower leg—that doesn't work, I have no feeling there either. But I've learned that now, or rather my brain has learned it, you have to say. And I actually got into running with this problem of the wheelchair on the mountain because I wanted to go up the hill once, and there was a hill near Disney where you could look out over the Hochgrat, and I wanted to go up.
And I was like, sitting in this wheelchair, and then I hauled myself out of it and basically used it like a walker on the mountain. And at the top of the mountain, I sat back into the wheelchair. And yeah, that's how I started. And then it went even better with the walker, and then at some point, they said, "Okay, let's try it with the crutches," or "walking aids," as they call them. So I set off with the crutches and at the beginning, I could walk, I don't know, maybe five meters or so. And then I'd go again—my goal was always that viewpoint to look out at the Hochgrat. And I'd, it always looked pretty funny, that was last autumn, because I'd walk ten meters and then I'd throw myself into the meadow on the left. Yeah, like, fallen onto my back. And there are other people out walking, too.
And then someone said, "That guy with the crutches is lying in the meadow." And I ended up falling into the meadow about ten, twenty times until I got up to that thing, the viewpoint. But at the beginning, when I tried it for the first time, the problem was I couldn't get up. I first had to learn, you know, how to get from that lying position to a standing one—that wasn't working. So at first, I always tried to lie down somewhere where there was a tree or something, so I could haul myself up and then get onto the crutches. And then I was in some rehab thing, and they had these mats and a ladder wall. And I lay down and tried to get up. That was my first exercise. Because I said, if I can manage that, then I can cover larger distances. And that was the next step. Then I eventually managed to get up without—well, with the help of the crutches, just getting up, hauling myself up.
And it kept getting better and better. And...
Where do you get this iron will from?
It was probably given to me somewhere. And I take it... Well, it was this doctor who told me—she told me, and I found that quite interesting—so, last year, while I was still lying in the hospital, I said, what is my goal actually? What do I still want to achieve? And then I said, well, back then I said, I basically have my goal: I want to get back up Kilimanjaro.
So, I was still lying there at the time. Now I want to go back to Kilimanjaro. Because it's quite funny, as I said, I have a special relationship with this Kilimanjaro. By then, I had been up there 64 times. And when I started with this Kilimanjaro thing, I have a very good friend, Richard Molel, in Tanzania. We founded a social aid project there called Extract Africa. And it's an agency now. And the goal of this agency is simply to bring work to Tanzania—specifically fairly paid work, so that people can live off it. Work, now I have to go back, on Kilimanjaro. So for the mountain guides, the cooks, and the porters. Simply fairly paid work on Kilimanjaro. And when I started with this Kilimanjaro thing, I didn't really want to go back at all.
I went down there as an instructor. When was that, about? That was about 15 years ago. I was sent to Kilimanjaro by the German Alpine Club, the Summit Club back then, as an instructor with the idea of training locals so that they could lead tourists up this mountain. Because before that, a German mountain guide was always sent along. And I was basically responsible back then for training the mountain guides on Kilimanjaro. That's when I went down for the first time. I didn't really want to, because I thought, well, Kilimanjaro. I was standing in the juice back then. I've climbed 8,000-meter peaks, I've climbed heavy tours too. So for me, Kilimanjaro wasn't really the thing. But then, enough. And the reason was, I fell in love with the mountain.
The fantastic thing is that you go through all the climate zones and at the top, there's ice. And this ice on Kilimanjaro has always fascinated me. And when I was with Richard back then and I'd done my first ten Kilimanjaro ascents, I said, Richard, listen. The two of us, we're going to do it 100 times, I'm going to do Kilimanjaro 100 times and then we'll hand it over to our children. This social project. And up until then, I'd been to the top 64 times. And then in rehab, I said I definitely want to go to Kilimanjaro again. And the doctor said to me, if you really want that—and that might sound very mystical now, and given my track record with Everest without oxygen—then I'll manage it. But I have to want it every single day. And I've basically been living that since last year.
I want to walk every day. I want to be able to walk every day. Of course, I do all sorts of things. I do so-called mirror therapy, where I try to mirror my right, healthy foot and train my brain to think that the left one works too. Then I do strength training every day, and electrotherapy every day. I have a device at home where I target these muscles—because if a muscle no longer has a function, as I said, it gets converted into connective tissue. And if that connective tissue were to eventually grow a muscle again, it wouldn't find any muscle left. Once a muscle is gone, it's gone. It doesn't come back. What I'm doing now with electrotherapy is like that frog gel experiment. I just hook up the electricity and make the muscle twitch so that it stays alive. And I do that with my lower leg muscles.
Every day. Then three times a week, or maybe twice, I'm in outpatient rehab and train there for three to four hours, and I just want to walk. And I have an app on my phone where you can record your steps. My goal is simply to do between 8,000 and 10,000 steps a day. And I like to try for that. And if I haven't reached it by nine in the evening, I just go out again and walk those few steps. That
Are you managing that already? So, are you already hitting your 10,000? Are you managing it?
Yeah, yeah. I'm managing them. So, I mean, I was... because I have to say, what's problematic about running is the cold. So, the winter has pretty much wrecked me. I just have brutal pain. And now with the warmth, it's flowing really well. So, that's working. The warmth is very good. What also helps me a lot is swimming. And now that everything was closed during the lockdown, you can swim again. I go swimming every day now. And that helps a lot. So, this swimming, it's a good therapy. And what I have to say about that, what also helps me brutally, is acupuncture. Because of acupuncture, I got off the painkillers. I mean, I was on them massively. I was taking 600 Tilidin a day. So that was... I was brutally under the influence of drugs, with the corresponding side effects too.
And through acupuncture, twice a week, we got rid of that. And acupuncture—I never would have thought it—is also psychological for me. I mean, I'm mentally different there. I get my old bite back. And
then I have
like before. So, this Mount Everest without oxygen. Everyone says it's impossible. And I say, if you don't try it, then it can't go away. You just have to try. And that—I have that attitude again. I mean, I used to do a lot of things where people said it wasn't possible. And for me, that was actually the challenge. Well, if you don't try it, then you don't really know if it's possible. And then, yeah, but that's a danger. Yes, but a danger is something I can't
And then I just go as far as I feel safe. And I can always turn back. That's how I see it now, too. So for me, the high point was Mount Everest. And the next thing I have planned is to be on Kilimanjaro at the end of August, beginning of September. With crutches. You see?
Do you still see that as... I mean, what's the word? Do you see it as realistic that you can manage that?
So, at the moment, I always have a bit of... yeah, it knocks me back again. So mentally, I can do it. At this point, I mean. I can get up. I can manage that. I'm a bit afraid of the descent. Because my problem is, when I train—and I just said, I have to, my goal is, I said I'm going, I have to go up the Hochgrad ten times, then I can do a Kilimanjaro. But so far, on the Hochgrad, I've always been at the top and for the descent, I've either used the sled—so I sledded down in the winter—or now in the summer, I've taken the cable car down. So I've never actually done a descent. And I had a neighboring mountain range,
I did that then, and I did really well, I descended again and then in the evening, I went to bed at eleven and took off my sock and was met with a bloodbath. My left foot, the toenail on the big toe was gone and the front of the tip was open down to the flesh. And I didn't feel it. I mean, I don't feel anything. Okay. On one hand, that's great, of course. On the other hand, the big problem is, well, what do you do? It's because I have this orthosis that lifts my foot. And it has a plastic plate at the bottom. And then there are two rubber bands crossed over to the lower leg so that it lifts my foot when I walk.
And that rubber plate at the bottom naturally tends to slide forward in the shoe when I go downhill. Now I'm constantly banging my toes against it.
And that's what happened. And then I was... and the left foot is very bad, it's bleeding there. It took over four weeks until the wound at the front healed. I couldn't do anything at all then. And then I was... I was in my 4th rehab, and I got the orthopedic shoemaker in Isny to put a new one on, Stefan—he also goes into the mountains—and he custom-made something for me. And now I have a different system with which I can go into the mountains that also fits into the mountain boot. He even had me... since the circulation is so bad, I had the shoe heater from my expedition boots custom-fitted into an insole for these shoes, so I can now heat my toes with the battery pack to cope. So the system seems to be working now, and with that, it seems possible for me to go downhill.
Do you have any plans to go flying again in any way? Especially since, as a descent aid, it could theoretically be interesting for you at least. Or is flying dead for you because you're saying, no, that's what actually got me into this whole mess?
That... I have to go back a bit. Let me give some background on flying. So, I got into flying, I did... I don't have the exact dates anymore. I have my old glider somewhere down in the basement, I didn't find it quickly just now. But I also have my first glider, it was a Jenair. And this Jenair, it had... well, I have to start a bit differently. I got into flying, I once did a course with hang gliding back in the day. But back then in Germany, earlier, that was, I think, around 1985 or something. I don't know exactly anymore. And back then, it was, I think even earlier. That was around, yeah, I think there was one in school. It was like, I don't know anymore. So around '80, '85, in that range, I did this course with hang gliding.
And that fascinated me. I mean, there were paragliders, but it wasn't really a thing in Germany yet.
And then I wanted to try hang gliding. Because flying has always fascinated me. I always thought it was great. And especially, I was always going into the mountains. I always thought those mountain dolins and stuff were cool, how they were in those lifts. I always thought that was awesome. And for me, it was like, wow, cool, on a mountain like that. And then flying down, not walking down. And so I tried hang gliding, but then I realized, yeah, the kite—first of all, I didn't have any money. And then it was very inconvenient, getting those kites up onto those mountains. But I could, I could just be honest with myself because I wanted to fly. And then the thing came up, ah, paragliders. There are paragliders. That's much more practical and it's super cool. At the beginning, I thought, because I went into the mountains a lot back then, I thought, yeah,
great, hiking up and flying down. You don't have to hike down. And then I started with friends, I started and then they also did the paragliders. We didn't do a course or anything, but then one of them showed me a bit and then you just flew for the first time. It worked out. You have to imagine, the gliders back then, they were a bit, I don't know, paragliders 1 to 4 or something, maximum. Nine
Cells or 13 cells, huge openings. That was,
that was already, that was like falling along the, along the profile, right. But, but it worked. And then that was, of course, that was great. We had no idea about wind and air and lee and anything, but, well, vacation and then the wind has to come from the front somehow, then you can easily take off. Then I always took off, you didn't do a control check or anything like that. For us, it used to be like, so you basically, you also have to be young enough, we basically, for us paragliding, the kick was taking off, right. Because you basically, from, from, from the inside, you said, that, you have to accept your death, right. Because you don't know if the thing will open or not.
So, you go straight down, right, because if it doesn't open, right,
so you don't take such a full hit to the face. Yeah, okay. And then, I mean, at some point they said, no, in Germany you need insurance now if you want to fly. And you could only get this insurance if you had some kind of certificate. So we went to Austria and got a certificate there. I can't tell you anymore what it was, because I've now, you know, found my gear, and that certificate we had would have been in there too. So we did a training course, I think it was over ten days, and then we got a certificate. I don't remember what kind of certificate it was, though. But in any case, with this certificate, you could then go to the DHV and get this insurance.
And then at that time, as I said, I could climb a mountain, and for me, flying in that sense wasn't the interesting part; I mean, it was cool, but I just wanted to get down, down from the mountains. So, what people call hike and fly today, or the beginnings of it. But it wasn't about us somehow going up thermically; if it went up, it was like, oh lalalala, no, no, I want to go down, I don't want to go up. So, for God's sake, thermals and all that, no idea. And then I just got this Jenner because it was a recommendation; it was very small. So, the small one, I put it in the bottom compartment of my normal backpack. It was like a little pile, so you could call it a slightly larger rescue. And we flew it, I flew it with climbing harnesses. Converted climbing harnesses.
Because we obviously wanted a rescue [parachute] that was lightweight, and this Jenner—well, they actually revoked its quality seal later on. Back then, people thought that if this paraglider had the perfect airfoil shape, it would fly better. And that profile at the front had cells that would close. Specifically, the ones in the middle; I think the ones at the edge were still open. But in the middle, they closed. It was like a slit that you could pull open, and then they would close. There were definitely several cells; in flight, they were closed. But accordingly, of course, if you hit some rough thermals or something, it would actually just keep collapsing. Well, it wasn't that big, it was... I think today you'd call that a speedwing.
It was super small, super light, and with a climbing harness, and it went so far that I flew some very, very wild stuff, but at times we couldn't land properly because our feet had fallen asleep. Because of that climbing harness, it dug into you, and I still remember a flight from the Dom in Switzerland. Did you have like half a...
had some nerve trauma from it, or something like that? Yes, yes, that
it's the feet, it's actually the feet. I flew down from the Dom, those are 4000ers in Switzerland, and down on the meadow, I couldn't land at all. I basically just got dragged along, you know? Yeah, so that's how we flew and back then I also—I mean, I flew from the Ottler back then, from the Dom in Switzerland, and yeah, then my biggest flight back then was, I flew from Mont Blanc. Yeah, I flew from Mont Blanc back then, although not down to Chamonix, that was, I think, sideways. We weren't going to Chamonix, we weren't even sure if we'd make it across. We didn't, we flew straight down, Saint-Gervais or whatever it's called. So we did that, I did that for about six years, that is, but it was always like,
it was never, it never had anything to do with safe flying, it was always like, there was always a certain amount of fear involved and it then,
I think that was in 1992, I took a massive collapse, so the glider would always collapse very slightly, you always had to pump it out, and then I took a collapse and it just, it spiraled me down like that, I went into a tree and then I said, well, that's, that's it, I think, for me. And in the meantime, you have to say, a bunch of my friends also crashed with that thing and then I said, well, it's just not worth it. I also had a crash at Hoch, just experienced it, someone who really landed badly and then, actually at roughly the same spot where I crashed, and he was paralyzed from the waist down, and I had that, my glider was broken anyway, I had no money either, I stopped doing it again. So I stopped around 1992 or something like that. Good, and then I...
more or less, that was also the time—I was actually always more of a mountain trekker, so this was just a way to descend, but I've seen it often, I've carried it down often, I had it with me on many tours and then carried it down because it just didn't fit, because the wind wasn't right, mostly it was too windy or we didn't have the wind in the direction I wanted to start, so that was very, very often, so I often just... but it wasn't that heavy, like I said, it fit in down there with the harness and then it didn't really matter whether you had it with you or not, and if it fit, then you flew, if it didn't fit, you didn't fly. But I also, as I said, went backwards a few times, got tangled up again somewhere, so I did fall badly a few times and you have to say, we were flying without reserve parachutes back then.
and we didn't have any protectors either, so it hurt quite a bit if it hit somewhere... But did you survive that part too? You have to say, I mean, during that initial period, I had a few friends who got hit really hard, like with massive fractures, but I didn't have any back then, so I didn't break anything and all, but I survived it. Actually, I should have stuck with it then, and then everything would have gone wonderfully, but then I got into the high-altitude park massively. That was also the time I started, at first I specialized a bit in sports; I initially planned to study medicine, but then I got the study spot in Berlin back then, when Nova was still up there, I then cancelled it and gave myself over to my hobbies a bit as a second option and studied teaching and,
I had sports, geography, and technology—I'm an electrician by trade, so I had technology as a major—then I studied teaching, but I already knew I didn't want to be a teacher; it was more like, now I have to do something. Then, a year later, I went to the States, to the USA; I got an exchange program at an Olympic training center for American sprinters and studied sports science there for two semesters, and that fascinated me. Especially in the US, it was naturally fascinating because they were incredibly well-equipped. Then I came back and it was clear to me, okay, I think this is my direction, this sports science. Then, after a few detours—I was still at the university in Munich—I came to Innsbruck, and in Innsbruck, there was the degree program
Sports Science with a focus on winter sports,
...with a degree in sports science. So, high-altitude physiology research means, how does altitude affect humans? You have to imagine it like this, my boss... had a degree in that, and during that time, a friend of mine—a friend of mine back then, or a colleague—who is a PhD mountain guide in the field of biology and sports science, was allowed to found an institute in Innsbruck. Specifically, an institute with a focus on high-altitude physiology and high-altitude medicine, so in the field of sports science, the Martin Butscher Institute. And that's where I started as an assistant, a research assistant, and I then had the opportunity to get into high-altitude physiological and high-altitude medical research.
High-altitude physiological research means: how does altitude affect humans? So, you have to imagine it like this, my boss...
did studies on how different medications affect humans at high altitudes. So, it was about studies like the Diamox study, then the Aspirin study—we just did various ones, we also tested Adalat, so different medications at altitude. The reason was that the pharmaceutical companies naturally supported and sponsored them because they could then write it on their package inserts, quite simply on the package insert. And I'm not a medic, I'm a sports scientist; I've focused on healthy people at high altitudes. That means I always tried to stick to the placebo group in my studies, not the medications, and then I started...
to study healthy people at high altitudes and then, at one point, I just stopped with a few of those stories because a lot of things simply weren't right, or what is actually assumed today, isn't right. Many things were incorrect, and one thing in particular made me suspicious, which is why I eventually got into this research: there was a study in a very renowned magazine, The Lancet, about Reinhold Messner. He climbed Mount Everest without oxygen in 1978 with Peter Haberler, and in this Lancet article, Oswald Oels—who was an Austrian but lived or did research in Switzerland at the time—published an article stating that endurance capacity is not the determining factor in high-altitude mountaineering, because according to this article, Messner simply had very low endurance capacity.
So, low means, like, how should I put it, like an average trained amateur athlete.
How is endurance performance measured? You can...
So there's a criterion, which is maximal oxygen uptake. I have to imagine it like this: the more oxygen your body can take in, the more power it can provide aerobically, so with oxygen available, and this oxygen uptake... you simply get more fuel, the oxygen is
the fuel for the body? No, the oxygen is,
So you basically have the fuel, which is glycogen or carbohydrates, exactly, the carbohydrates, and now, the more oxygen you simply bring in, the brighter and longer the flame burns. And this oxygen intake, it's called the gross criterion of endurance performance, this oxygen uptake capacity, it's called VO2 max. Messner's VO2 max was under 50 milliliters per kilogram of body weight, and these 50 milliliters—maybe you have to put it this way—these X-Alps athletes, they are all significantly above that; they're all certainly around 60. That's broken down by body weight; a lighter athlete won't make it because mountaineering is a sport where I have to move my body weight against gravity, which is why body weight is absolutely crucial for this oxygen intake.
So, in short, he said or measured that Messner's oxygen uptake was low, in the range of an average athlete, and therefore endurance capacity cannot be the determining factor for the high-altitude routes. So, apparently, that's not the criterion for why Messner was able to do it back then. And then he said, or it was suspected, it must be something genetic. So it's something else; it's definitely not endurance capacity, I couldn't believe that. I just couldn't believe it, because in the Alps, endurance capacity is absolutely crucial. And it's also true that endurance capacity decreases by 10% for every 1,000 meters of altitude above 1,500 meters.
That means quite simply, on Everest at 8,000 meters, I still have a third—that is, a third of the endurance capacity we have down here. If that were already low, I wouldn't even have the air or oxygen up there to take a single step. So for me, it was simply that something about the whole thing wasn't right. And then, of course, I had the great luck—well, I can check it, I can verify it. And that was the case too. Then, yes, in 1998 I got the opportunity to accompany a scientific expedition as a sports scientist to Cho Oyu, which is 8,200 meters high in Tibet, to conduct studies. I examined the people beforehand in Brand, Vorarlberg, and then throughout the entire expedition, all the way to the summit, and I found out—first of all, that's nonsense—that those who had the highest endurance capacity were also the ones who reached the summit in short times.
The others also made it up there, but they took much, much longer, and at high altitudes, you often do this intermittent walking. That means I take a few steps and then stop again. And those with the low endurance capacity could only limp to the summit, while the two or three with the highest endurance capacity just pushed through. And the reason for that—or what I published back then—is that endurance capacity doesn't determine whether you reach the summit or not, but it determines how long it takes, or rather, how long you stay in that danger zone. Ultimately, it turned out that those with the lowest oxygen endurance capacity were also the ones who got frostbite because they were simply out there for far too long. So for me, it was clear: okay, the criterion for getting up there is, of course, it can't be any other way,
High-altitude climbing is an extreme endurance sport, but in this area, we can only burn fat—that's also something we've observed, we don't burn carbohydrates. And that's why it ultimately doesn't matter what's up there. So I did other studies where I looked at whether it's better to eat high-fat or high-carbohydrate meals, and we found that it doesn't matter what's there. The main thing is that you eat something, that you're somehow taking in calories. And those with the highest endurance capacity were simply out for a shorter time and were exposed to this hypoxia—this low oxygen partial pressure—for a shorter time, so the whole thing was simply safer. So, my endurance capacity determines a bit of the risk I'm willing to take. The better I'm trained in the endurance area, the lower the risk.
staying at this altitude for a long time.
If you look at it very briefly, how does this result—that Messner supposedly had such low endurance—fit together with your result? Because you'd actually have to say, if he's performing that well, having just climbed thousands of meters on Mount Everest, which is still very high, how does that all fit together?
So that's quite simple. It probably went like this: you can only determine maximum endurance capacity through a maximal test. You usually do that on a bike ergometer, wearing a mask that compares the composition of the inhaled air with the composition of the exhaled air, and then you just calculate the delta in oxygen to see how much oxygen he actually metabolized. And the higher the exertion, the more oxygen you metabolize. Now, if you're looking for a maximum—the thing is called VO2max, so maximum endurance capacity or maximum oxygen uptake—that naturally assumes you're exerting yourself to the maximum. And here's the catch. What is the criterion for maximum exertion? That's very difficult. So, as it looks now, Messner just didn't really feel like it.
He just sat on the bike and didn't go full throttle. Of course, he has a higher aerobic capacity. Okay? But as I said, it depends on whether you want to push yourself to the limit or not. And that wasn't a maximum effort for him. So that was the whole point.
So it's like that, and you can see it very clearly today. I mean, the person who is currently the fastest and most capable is Kilian Jornet from—where is he from, Spain, I think—he's now an Everest climber who ran up twice from base camp, in one go, in about 16 hours or something, and he has an endurance capacity of 70 milliliters or even more. I think he's even over 70. So it's very clear. In my case, I had an endurance capacity of 60 milliliters, but I managed to make it up Everest with this special breathing technique, which I can go into more later, yes, and ultimately made it up Everest as well.
So there are two criteria: it's the endurance capacity and it's the body weight—actually three, because you have to carry as little as possible up, then there's the extra weight, so just no heavy backpacks because that ruins the endurance capacity again. And in my case, what's added is that I developed a special breathing technique in my research, which makes it possible to simply do what Messner did—and I can say upfront, it's not genetic, it has nothing to do with genetics—to climb these high mountains; anyone who is well-trained, I don't want to call myself an elite athlete, but anyone well-trained with this breathing technique can do it too.
That was part one of the conversation with Thomas Lemle. In part two, we continue directly with the question of what Thomas's special breathing technique does to the body and how you can also benefit from it as a Gleitschirm-Blog. He talks about his experiences with flying problems in thin high-altitude air, how his dramatic paraglider accident actually saved his life in a way, and what he is still afraid of now. Stay tuned.